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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:23 pm

That's unfortunate about his slides, but 40 years later is still more proven than digital at this point. To this very day all films and TV shows, even those recorded digitally, are archived on 35mm film, because it's proven when stored in a proper way. And even when stored improperly, the fact that something physical is still around, you can't beat it if you ask me. Kodachrome slides have shown little if any color fading 100 years after they were first developed, while black and white film just goes on and on, constantly giving us glimpses into our world's history. Only a couple years ago we just got a hold of someone's super 8 film of the Kennedy assassination, and when properly transfered over, must have been shot with Kodachrome itself, looks great. The 70's was a bad decade for "new" film, Ektachrome was becoming popular and had not been refined, many of those slides have indeed shown great fade over the years, but was incredibly popular due to the fact that you could develop it at home... and even that process, that accounts for some of the fade as well if you've don't got it down.

Image

The above image is of my dad in the 70's, taken with Ektachrome... And this is acknowledging benefits to digital... The actual slide is 100% white to the eye, it's completely whited out, overexposed flash. You can't make anything out of it... Due to how it was shot in the first place, not the film itself. But using digital techniques, this is what I was able to get out of it... That image is taken digitally? Deleted, 100% chance. I use digital on occasion because it is useful, for anyone to use one bad experience to utterly dismiss a form of artistic expression that not only to this day has technical reasons for being used (because it can easily still be looked at as better), it has artistic reasons for being used even if it was not in terms of quality because of its quirks, super 8 is still being used because of this, but indeed is the only proven archival method for moving pictures... It makes me sigh, because it's not amateur photographers that will be the death of film, a medium that deserves to live much longer than floppies, for example, which are still going and have reasons to be used, but those are mostly for nostalgia, but we still use them and buy them... It's going to be everyday people with their 1000's of pics on phones that have every reason to pick up some film now and then and support their local photoshop, because its not that expensive and its physical... Shit happens, fires might light up and destroy it all... All my crap is in a few boxes just in case of that, so maybe I'll be thinking "hey, grab that box before you burn to death!" and I'll still have it... But it's also in digital form, quite a bit of it, because digital has its uses, and I'm of the minority in having practically all my documents/music/photos since 1997 on various hard drives. My stuff is going to go on just fine...

But the thing about analog is the better digital gets, the better the analog stuff looks. Transfer them all over now, in 5 years it's going to be 10k and your 1080p super8 transfer is going to look terrible at that point... That's when you go back to the original film, once again, which has transfered to VHS, to CD, to MP4 and so on, and at that point 10k or whatever it is, and it just looks better and better every single time you do it. That slide held all that information underneath the overexposure, and in 10 years if I want to show it off again, I will first go back to the slide that is overexposed and try it again, digital is the fall back, everytime.

I'm all things retro, film photography has been an unfortunate thing that has become retro when it deserves to still be a thing, but I do feel it's important for us groups of people into these old things, whatever old thing it may be, in this case here old Amiga computers, to not be unaware of the great joy in other old things. If your dad was an accomplished amateur photography, he might still have those cameras... I say get them out, try them yourself, have your son try them out as well, you never know when you might have the opportunity to expose someone else, and even yourself, to some great love... And maybe even your father... Who might not understand your Amiga love... Watch him light up and the things he's going to love discussing when you start talking about using his camera and sharing techniques. I had a girlfriend who's dad has the EXACT same camera I use most of the time, a Nikon FM... he's gone on to digital at this point, but he saw me and my camera, and that was a great moment, we can discuss all kinds of things even though he's not using his film anymore.

There's no "good luck with that" or "take care there" when it comes to film and me... I know what I'm talking about in this subject, it will last with me because I'll make sure of it, just like digital can last for some and indeed me, because I make sure of it. I have said it before, and I'll say it any chance I get, to anyone who fancies themselves an amateur digital photographer, they need to respect film enough to give it a go once and awhile, much like going back to the A2000/A1000, you might just never go back to the 1200. But there's no way anybody would regret it. It's fun.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:50 pm

If your dad was an accomplished amateur photograph[er], he might still have those cameras...
Funny you say that. Last year I got a small-ish heavy box in the mail with two of his old Olympus cameras from ancient times. He wasn't sure if they still worked or not. I imagine they do (I haven't used them at this stage yet). By today's standards they look rather quaint. It's pretty impressive to see them built in solid metal, though. They don't have any real monetary value, but lots of sentimental value. And they did produce some stunning images thanks to my dad's good eye and self-taught skills back then. He can't take a picture to save his life anymore. I think his hands shake too much and his eyes aren't what they used to be.

But I've put the cameras on a shelf in my office next to my ancient computers. Projects for another day.

When my step-dad died two years ago, my mom - in a fit of depression - had me sit down and look at huge stacks of photos she'd kept for 70+ years. She said, "Whatever you don't keep is going in the trash." I was shocked, but I didn't argue. I put some aside for sure, but I couldn't take them all. A few pounds went into the trash. They were her memories mainly - not mine. Old photos of people I'd never met without names or dates. Like a photographic cemetery. I simply didn't have the means nor the space nor will to take it all. It was a weird feeling, but they were hers to discard at the time. I did my best.

+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

Something else about the Fred Fish archive I'd love to track down - leighb2282 maybe you can assist? - after he stopped doing floppy disks and moved over to CD-ROMs in the early 90s he organized the original files into "themes". For example, from what I've read: programming tools, graphics programs, etc. I would LOVE to see his take on that. leighb2282 could you load up your CD-ROM that you have and share it's structure? (Or, better yet, put an ISO somewhere I could grab?)

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:58 pm

That's the thing that truly dooms digital in the end though, the lack of personal connection to the images. Even if they do survive on computer hard drives or servers, well the cloud stuff is super doomed once someone dies if someone does not know their password... But even on the hard drives... In the end the "convenience" of digital when first taking those shots spells the doom of those pictures because of the lack of convenience in putting them to other devices once someone dies.

Like you said, those are her memories, not yours. But still, you hung on to quite a few of them I imagine... That's the convenience of film and having all of it on paper... You can pour through them all, probably be bored at most, but once in awhile something might hold your attention... and you're much more prone to put a few in the "maybe" pile, to look at again later, thus these lives that maybe one is not attached to might survive a little longer. Digitals thousands of pictures, many of which might be the same pose taken 15 times just to make sure they got it right... If you don't have that connection... Almost guaranteed to go in your computers trash bin, even if you've got plenty of space on the drive. It's those little grey areas people don't tend to think about.

Sometimes you can donate old pictures, might be surprised at the value someone not connected at all might find in them. I see people selling old Super8 films all the time in lots... Get them, old family memories, most of little artistic value, but it can be fascinating to look at them... That was the life of someone, people cared about them, they cared about things... We record only the best of us, what was the worst in them? Why did nobody care enough to keep this stuff? Deep stuff.

-----------------

Back to Fred; Sounds like his ISO might just be something he grabbed online at some point, and likely just has the disks themselves, not the organized collection. So they're all on Aminet, but can only be searched by their actual file names? Might as well not be there, then...

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:44 pm

I just looked through my archive and it looks like I have a mirrored copy of aminet from about 2/2017. I don't remember mirroring it but who knows last year... But yeah all 1000 disks are there in LHA format. Not adfs like I have seen before on other archives.
Attachments
Aminet.jpg
Aminet Fish Stew


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leighb2282

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 9:35 pm

intric8 wrote:

Something else about the Fred Fish archive I'd love to track down - leighb2282 maybe you can assist? - after he stopped doing floppy disks and moved over to CD-ROMs in the early 90s he organized the original files into "themes". For example, from what I've read: programming tools, graphics programs, etc. I would LOVE to see his take on that. leighb2282 could you load up your CD-ROM that you have and share it's structure? (Or, better yet, put an ISO somewhere I could grab?)
Unfortunately, my disk is organized by disk, not themes, they are also just folders not .LHA or .ADF.

Once i head back to the house (I moved it to our new house :cry: thinking I won't need it) I will create an iso image of it to share, its an 'official?' Fred Fish 'fish market' branded disk which contains disks 260 - 1000.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:31 pm

@leigh2282 it's probably OK. If it's just the disks, I've already got them all. I was more curious as to what happened when you launched the CD-ROM and what kind of info-tree you might have been presented with. I am super curious which CD you have, though.

There were several 3rd-party companies that published his collection. (e.g. 'Fish n' More' by Xetec Inc., 'The Fred Fish Collection' (Hypermedia, etc.).

And then he started making his own sets, particularly Frozen Fish and Gold Fish.

Seriously - the man had some good fun with his name, which I just love. I'm mostly curious which set your disk is from, and what do you see in terms of choices when you load it?

User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Tue Jan 16, 2018 11:20 pm

So its apparently an Asimware Innovations publication disc, (specifically the one in the link below), and when you open it up it gives you a folder called 'fishmarket' and then in that folder are the disks each split into blocks of 50 (so a folder labeled 260-310 for example) and then in that folder is 50 individual folders named for the fish disk number.

IMAGE

Meaning its not really a fancy menu system.

As before once i get back to the house on the weekend i'll make an ISO to get to you.
intric8 wrote:@leigh2282 it's probably OK. If it's just the disks, I've already got them all. I was more curious as to what happened when you launched the CD-ROM and what kind of info-tree you might have been presented with. I am super curious which CD you have, though.

There were several 3rd-party companies that published his collection. (e.g. 'Fish n' More' by Xetec Inc., 'The Fred Fish Collection' (Hypermedia, etc.).

And then he started making his own sets, particularly Frozen Fish and Gold Fish.

Seriously - the man had some good fun with his name, which I just love. I'm mostly curious which set your disk is from, and what do you see in terms of choices when you load it?





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